Sweet Mandarin is a Chinese restauraunt in Manchester's Northern Quarter, which is basically behind…read morethe Crowne Plaza of Rochdale Road and close to the Holiday Inn, owned by three sisters it has gained a lot of publicity on television which was the reason I wanted to try it. They were featured on Gordon Ramsay's The F Word and were also on UK business show Dragon's Den twice, advertising their ready meals in 2005 and more recently advertising the sauces they sell in supermarkets and use in restaurants - the story behind their products and the three sisters working together to produce "great quality Chinese food catering for allergies such as gluten-free" was appealing to me, however my high expectations were far from met, infact my experience here was so disappointing, it made me feel sick.
The prices here are a little high, with mains generally between 10 and 20 pounds but the presentation for me is a little poor and sloppy, for example, I ordered a lemon chicken as my main, all it was was slices of chicken, it comes with nothing other than the chicken and sauce - no sides etc which were all extras. The "mains" are more like big sharing boards for groups, rather than mains for one person perhaps.
For my starter, I ordered gluten-free spring rolls, is excited to try them have never tried them before, being quite a newbie to Chinese cuisine, I found out this was basically fried puff pastry containing vegetables and spring onions. For me, they were basically inedible, I found them to first be extremely hot and even after they had cooled, they were hard and the vegetables were too wet and stringy. My friend ordered seaweed as her starter, I found it to be far too salty but she appeared to enjoy it.
For my main, I ordered the lemon chicken which was once again dreadful, the chicken was a little hard and bland but what made it worse was the big thick sauce, it looked like a thick discoloured bodily fluid rather than a nice, enjoyable sauce - the USP of this restauraunt and the brand as a whole is the sauces, and if they can't even get that right, I'm astonished and lost for words. It was basically a sickly and ugly mess.
The rest of my party seemed to order the chow meins, one mixed meat, one just with chicken, a group of four people all complained about the chicken which was amongst the poorest quality of chicken I've had in a long time, the portion sizes again were huge - it is a real shame the waiter seemed more interested in what money they could get out of me, rather than offering ideas and warning us about what to expect with the portion sizes - knowing how big the plates were we could have ordered a variety of things, or less food. Even if the food was remotely pleasant, it still was far too large in size for a portion.
I decided to order an extra side to go with my chicken, the salt and pepper chips which I found to be probably the only edible part of my meal, the chips were decent quality but it just was the vegetables which were not, they once again were thick, and also hard.
The overall decor of this place seems a little cheap, it is slightly small as you walk in through cardboard barriers, and it just doesn't have the overall feel of a restauraunt. It's slightly strange and not the nicest of places that's for sure, it certainly doesn't give the high-end feel, infact the only thing about this place which is high-end are the prices.
With tea being a huge export in China, I was pleased to see a huge and great selection of iced tea for just £4 each, I decided to opt for a pear iced tea but it was incredibly sweet and filled with sugar, it was a watery and sugary mess to the point those awful flavours basically made the tea hard to taste and the drink once again an abysmal mess.
The opening hours are also slightly restrictive and they also appear to open after 5 only, and a lack of an online booking system makes it hard to arrange a table as you have to communicate with email, which I don't like and shows not only is Sweet Mandarin lacking with the competition in terms of pricing and food quality, but it also lacks behind in the technology form too, and the egotistical act of boasting of their own achievements seem to outweigh everything else, including making the experience better for the customer, I can't help but feel a sense of arrogance too, Sweet Mandarin might have won many awards years ago, I can't comment having not visited before today, but I feel these awards have added a sense of arrogance, making the owners slightly arrogant when really they're food was a dreadful, overpriced mess, which meant I'd leave the restauraunt hungry and feeling sick.
When making a reservation via email I was told "We look forward to welcoming you to Sweet Mandarin for some delicious Chinese cuisine" but my experience was an insult to Chinese cuisine and is enough to put anyone off from ordering Chinese food, being a mess from start to finish so I sadly feel Sweet Mandarin is somewhere to Avoid at all costs!
